Tomb Raiding: My Family's Last Clan Chief is Little Brother

Chapter 407 Divine Lake Fish Beast
Rudd recounted the incident, saying, "About two weeks ago, they seemed to have captured a very important person, and the guards were extremely tight."

Upon hearing this, Zhang Wuxun frowned. It seemed that the two guys sent by the Anjing headquarters were not to be underestimated. Could the person they had captured be A Ning?

If Anning is really captured by the people from Anjing Company, then when everyone gathers, the Germans will definitely bring her along as well. After all, with Yueya around, the Germans will definitely think that there is a relationship between Anning and them. Whether it is used for threats or exchanges of benefits, there is always a purpose behind it.

Moreover, it's not hard to tell from Rude's words that the other party takes the person they captured very seriously.

"Do you know whether the people those two superiors arrested were men or women?" Zhang Wu asked.

Rudd shook his head. "I don't even know the location of their separate outposts. They're very secretive, let alone anyone can see them."

Unable to get any more information from Rude, Zhang Wuxun had no intention of wasting time. He got up, picked up the wooden box, nodded to Deren, and said, "I'll leave the person to you."

Deren smiled slightly, "Xia Shunruo, please rest assured."

Perhaps because of Zhang Menyu's influence, Deren no longer addressed Zhang Wuxun with the polite "distinguished guest from afar" as he had at the beginning, but instead used a more intimate term that carried the meaning of his Tibetan name, "Xia Shunruo".

In Tibetan, Han Chinese are called "Jia," which is also the same as "Xia." "Shunruo" is a transliteration of "emptiness" in Buddhist terminology, meaning sky, emptiness, and spiritual clarity.

It is also emptiness, stillness, and non-existence, referring to the illusory and unreal nature of things, or the emptiness and clarity of the principle. This "emptiness" is a description of the changes of all things in the world.

Deren then waved behind him, and two tall, strong, and somewhat unusual lamas emerged from the darkness. They stepped forward, bowed to Zhang Wuxun, and were about to knock Lude unconscious and take him away.

Zhang Wuxun sized up the two lamas, raised an eyebrow, and looked at Deren, "Your temple is truly full of hidden talents."

Deren continued to smile, "If Xia Shun is too kind, then we should just take it as a precaution."

It seems that the sudden death of the previous Naruhito had a great impact on him. After learning about the significance of Naruhito, he must have realized that the death of the previous Naruhito was not so simple.

As the lama approached, Rude obediently stretched out his neck and added, "Please find me a doctor who can treat my broken arm. My arm is broken, and I can't afford to be disabled so that I can support my family in the future."

Zhang Wuxun paused as he turned around, then looked back at him with a cold smile, "You're acting so professionally, your boss should give you a lot of bonuses, right? It's just an arm, what does it matter if it's useless or not?"

Rude's expression changed instantly, and his whole body tensed up, but he consciously relaxed again, trying to lower their guard. However, it was no use; Zhang Wuxun had seen through his trick from the very beginning.

"You're just here to deliver a message, why don't you just say so? You've been acting for so long, with all this self-inflicted suffering and declarations of loyalty, aren't you tired?"

Zhang Wuxun pointed to him, indicating that the lama should search his pocket. Sure enough, they found a small black cube about the size of a cell phone battery in his pocket. It was a bugging device with a red dot on it.

Deren's two bodyguard lamas had been special forces soldiers and were very familiar with this kind of thing. They immediately and violently removed the bugging device on the spot. Rude's face turned pale and ashen.

Deren waved his hand slightly, and two lamas immediately stepped forward, knocked the person unconscious, and took him away.

Buddhists are forbidden from killing, but not killing doesn't mean they have no temper. Buddhism also has its own set of disciplinary methods, and they certainly won't let this lying foreigner get away with it.

To express his apology, Deren personally escorted Zhang Wuxun to the guest room arranged for him.

On the way, Zhang Wu asked him what Rude had added to the butter tea he had given him. If the tea hadn't gone cold and tasted bad, he might have actually been poisoned.

“I have some knowledge of traditional Chinese medicine. Judging from the unusual taste in the cup, it is probably drowsy herb, which is commonly found. Given your special constitution, a small amount will not be a problem,” Deren explained slowly.

"Tomorrow I'll have Xiao Zha heat up some red date and goat milk for you to cleanse your body, and it will also be good for replenishing your qi and blood."

Zhang Wuxun inexplicably felt the same kind of care from an elder as the fat mother, and said, "Then thank you very much, Master."

Deren escorted Zhang Wuxun to the door, watched him go in and light the candles, then exchanged a few pleasantries before taking his leave, saying, "If Xia Shun has any questions, you may come to the quiet room to find me."

"I understand, Master. Take care." Zhang Wu returned the bow and watched Deren's figure disappear into the distance.

After closing the door and returning to his room, Zhang Wuxun walked to the window, lifted the felt blanket a crack, and looked out at the starlit scenery.

This room is a bit far from the temple gate, located towards the back of the mountain. From the window, you can see the snow-covered peaks and the vast, distant mountains.

After resting for a night, a young lama brought breakfast and goat milk in the morning. Zhang Wuxun thanked him and said that he could eat breakfast in the dining hall where the lamas in the temple ate in the future. However, the goat milk was still brought by the same young lama every morning, at almost the exact same time, without fail.

For the next few days, Zhang Wuxun stayed indoors, continuing to examine the records and documents left by the previous Deren.

In Deren's record, the young man only said that what swallowed Logonbu was a very strange fish. Perhaps it shouldn't be called a fish, but rather a huge, very fast fish-beast in the water.

The young man didn't mention the battle scene, or how he fought the fish-beast for three hundred rounds. He wasn't a good storyteller. This series of accounts was all recorded by the young man himself, organizing his memories and recording them in a very orderly manner from beginning to end before relaying them to Deren.

However, it's certain that the guy eventually managed to get Logomb out of the fish's belly, because the guy reappeared in later episodes.

Regarding this part, Deren only said that the young man was injured, but it wouldn't affect his actions. However, the underwater world is the territory of fish and beasts, so the young man's injuries must have been quite serious.

If the blue-robed Tibetan was waving at someone other than the young man, then who was it? That fish-beast?
Were the fish-beasts raised in the great lake by the blue-robed Tibetans? How did they control the fish-beasts' behavior? What did the blue-robed Tibetans' waving gesture mean? Was it a command to attack?

Moreover, according to the German's notebook that the young man and his companions found, there was not just one fish in the lake, but a whole group of them. If Logombu had really been dragged into the water, even if the young man had three heads and six arms, he would not be able to rescue Logombu intact from the mouths of a group of creatures that were even more troublesome than a combination of hippos and crocodiles.

There must be some unknown details involved, and Zhang Wuxun kept this doubt to himself.

After rescuing Logonbu, the young man and his companion rested briefly before leading him towards the spot where the blue-robed Tibetans had boarded their boat. The lake surface near the shore was frozen solid, making it very stable to walk on, almost like walking on land.

But the closer you get to the center of the lake, the thinner the ice becomes. Eventually, as soon as you step onto the ice, you hear a heart-stopping cracking sound.

The two had to take a detour. The shape of the entire lake was very similar to a palm-leaf fan. The side they were walking on was the fan surface, and further away was the fan handle, a very deep valley.

After four hours, they finally circled around the edge of the fan and approached the deep valley, only to understand why, in such a high-altitude and cold region, the lake surface, which should have been indiscriminately frozen, had only the central part of the water remaining unfrozen.

Because the only shortcut to the other side is to row across the lake from the center.

The deep valley was also part of the narrow lake, with cliffs on both sides covered in snow. They walked along the lakeside until it got dark, and only when they reached the middle of the canyon did something unusual appear ahead.

They saw that at the end of the canyon, many beams were grafted onto the cliff face and stretched across the air, and several thick pillars were buried deep in the lake and anchored to the bottom of the lake. On these wooden beams, an ancient temple was built in mid-air.

The Lama temple is seven stories high and is built with black stones from the Himalayas. The overall appearance is a simple, gloomy dark gray, giving people a very ominous feeling.

Below the temple, a platform is built on the lake, with many small wooden boats tied to the pillars on the side and placed on the platform.

The two men walked down to the foot of the temple and saw a small wooden boat covered with a layer of fresh ice. The ice was still very fragile, indicating that it had been left there by the Tibetans who had previously traveled by boat.

The young man then told Logonbu to wait below while he climbed up the wooden beam and found the entrance under the temple, though it was weighed down by something heavy.

The young man tried to push the wooden plank blocking the hole with his shoulders and back, and then, taking a deep breath, he quietly pushed it aside and crawled into the hole.

What he didn't see was that the moment he entered the temple, a huge beast head emerged from the lake beneath the wooden beams. Its crimson scales gleamed with a cold, sharp light. It silently broke through the water's surface, resting its enormous head on the edge of the wooden platform. Its gaping maw revealed two people dressed in blue Tibetan robes and wearing silver-patterned masks.

The two masked men looked at Logombu standing on the shore, and one of them slowly spoke, "He went in?"

Logomb nodded, the anxiety on his face completely gone, replaced by a calm and composed demeanor. "Yes, perhaps this is the person we've been waiting for."

"hope so."

The man in the blue robe sighed, followed by a long silence.

As the young man entered the room, he immediately saw a storage room. On the left were piles of wooden tools, and on the right were stored food, including charcoal, ingredients, and some kind of meat hanging from the rafters.

Lamas who follow Tibetan Buddhism are allowed to eat meat, but there are restrictions. They can only eat "three pure meats," which means meat that was not killed with their own eyes, was not killed by themselves, and was not killed because of them.

There was a great deal of dried meat, all frozen solid like stone.

The young man looked around the floor and found many signs of long-term habitation, indicating that those strange Tibetans did not come here only once every ten or twenty years, but rather frequently.

The young man quickly found the wooden stairs built straight up and down next to the stone wall, carefully climbed up, and as soon as he emerged, he immediately smelled a very strong Tibetan incense aroma.

Long felts hung from the beams on this floor, their various colors creating a flamboyant effect that appeared as a colorful black in the firelight.

These felt blankets hung down, with the tassels at the bottom edges reaching the ground. Some of the larger blankets were surrounded by many smaller blankets, dividing the space into sections. Each small pavilion surrounded by blankets contained a charcoal stove, making the whole room warm and relaxing.

It was so warm here that when the young man was looking for the stairs to the next floor, he paused for a moment to warm up his body, which had been cold outside for a long time. He approached a charcoal stove and discovered that the rich Tibetan incense aroma was not coming from the stove.

Feeling something was off, he followed the scent through the felt and quickly found the source of the Tibetan incense.

He also saw that behind these large areas of felt, on the floor, a more ornate area was enclosed by felt, and in the center, an unidentified object was trembling slightly, covered with the same felt.

The young man knew the thing was alive because he heard very shallow breathing sounds, very faint, like a human but not quite.

The young man crouched down, his hand resting on the short knife strapped to his leg, staring warily at the object.

He soon discovered that it was a woman, or more precisely, a woman whose limbs had been broken, with only a little skin and tendons still connecting them. The blood at the broken ends, which had been frozen to a dark gray, began to melt in this warm place, and the blood seeped out, soaking the white blanket beneath her.

I don't know why this woman was put here in this state; you can tell she's in a lot of pain.

The young man walked over and discovered that the woman was also blind; her eyes were cloudy. He knew that when a person's eyes are exposed to thick smoke and the visual function of the eyeballs is almost completely damaged, the eyeballs will turn this color.

In other words, the woman in front of him was not completely blind; she could still sense a very faint source of light.

Why would those Tibetans torture this pretty girl like this? Even though her wounds have been roughly stitched with hemp thread, it's clear they don't want her wounds to heal. More than one bone in her body is broken; she must have suffered extreme torture.

Was this some kind of punishment inflicted on the girl by those strange Tibetans? The young man was puzzled. What had the girl done to deserve such a cruel and elaborate torture, leaving her barely clinging to life?

The young man didn't feel sorry for her. Pity didn't exist in his mind. He had seen too much ugliness in the world. Sympathy was not an extra emotion for him, and it was the most useless thing for him.

He didn't want to know the reason why the girl looked like that.

The end of the month is always strict; a slight mistake can get your post blocked. This is the third time I've posted it, and if it doesn't work, I'll just have to wait until the editors are back at work to revise it.

(End of this chapter)